Bought a hitch and a winch

[Mike82ndABN]

I bought a hitch off ebay, I was pleasantly surprised at how heavy duty it is when I opened the box. Weighs a good amount and feels like its made of armored steel plate or something. Bolts right up where the pintle was. I don't plan on towing a boat or camper or anything, just wanted to have a hitch to add utility things like a rack or a winch.

So i also went and got the harbor freight parking lot sale 12K winch for less than $300, and a receiver mount for it. So far I like it, I know you only get what you pay for but I took it apart and the internals look good, they made an attempt to make it water resistant with orings and gaskets.

Just bought a deep cycle battery that I will use for the winch, I won't charge it off the truck, I'll just hit it the night before with the NOCO Genius. I don't plan on pulling myself up hills, just getting unstuck if im off roading and theres no one else around.

Found a cool battery box at walmart, the lid has a built in power gauge and a couple 12v cig lighter outlets, and two posts that run thru to the battery. I can charge my phone and run the winch. lol.

I kind of like the idea of the winch being on a receiver mount, I can take it off when I want. I add a receiver on the front and put it there if I want, or I can take the winch and the battery box and use a chain or a strap have it attached to a tree on dry ground. Or even put it on someone else's truck.

 

[RustyM923]

How will you store the winch in the truck when you're trail driving?

 

[Mike82ndABN]

Bought a receiver bracket that attaches to anything flat with 4 bolts, I am bolting it to the back of the bed, and the winch mount can slide into it and live there until i need it. Then when I'm stuck like chuck, I take it out the bed receiver, and put it into the rear receiver.

 

[Mike82ndABN]

I would have just mounted it behind the front bumper but it's pretty wet on some of the FL trails...

 

[Mike82ndABN]

My setup worked pretty good today. As we were leaving for the day we came across a stuck Ford Explorer. The truck they were using to pull it out was spinning and not able to get good traction. I parked the hmmwv in front of the exploder and pulled with the winch from the rear. It's a slow pull but it brought the explorer right out of the mud. They were happy, they would have been out there awhile.

 

[MDSA]

I have the same winch and winch mount, and I am very happy with the set up and operation. I use the winch with my dually for pulling cars up on a trailer and logs out of the woods. Haven't been stuck - yet. We just used it to pull a broken down forklift up onto my trailer, and you could hear the winch really working and torqueing down, but pull it she did.

 

[Mike82ndABN]

I'm going to baby this thing to get some life out of it. Dedicated battery, keep the winch in the bed, high and dry until I need it, and I bought a snatch pulley so I can reduce the stress on the motor when winching.

Are you running yours off the vehicle electric or a separate battery? I bought a deep cycle but I've been reading that a regular battery with more cranking amps may have been better.

 

[TwoStates]

This is a pretty neat idea you had and I intend to look into it as well. Do you think that receiver hitch will attach to the existing holes on a rear airlift bumper?